THE Minister of Health, Ms. Sylvia T. Masebo is in Geneva, Switzerland attending the 72nd Health Ministers Conference for East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC) which was happening as pre-event to the World Health Assembly.

The ECSA Health Community which will be celebrating 50 years of existence in 2024, is an inter-governmental health organization that fosters and promotes regional cooperation in health among member states. Member states of the ECSA Health Community are Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Eswatini, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

During the Ministers conference, Hon. Masebo emphasized the need for countries to increase domestic financing for the health sector and slowly decrease the donor or external funding. She further highlighted the need to discuss appropriate strategies that would foster regional collaboration that would benefit our countries in many different ways.

The ministers discussed many aspects common to the region including Disease Surveillance and TB, National TB Reference Labs, TB in the Mining Sector and Health Emergencies. They further discussed the human resource for health (HRH) capacity building especially through the colleges and the need to increase the output from the various specialist colleges.

The ministers unanimously agreed that health challenges that the region faces demand a more robust and coordinated response and ECSA-HC provides the platform to work together for the achievement of common goals.

The conference was attended by Health Ministers from East, Central and Southern Africa counties, including Zimbabwe Vice President Dr Christantino Chiwenga who is also Minister of Health.

MINISTER of Health Sylvia Masebo has taken a swipe at the nurses advising them to keep fake eyelashes, long nails and high heels away from the hospital ward.

Ms Masebo has described as unprofessional the type of dressing that has been exhibited by some nurses who are fond of putting up an appearance not fit for the noble profession.

“Go back to your uniforms. Let us get back to the real profession of a nurse. Do not let your dressing be restrictive towards work. The type of dressing where a nurse has long nails, fake eyelashes, short dresses and wearing heels is not for the hospital,” Ms Masebo said.

She said this during the commemoration of Nurses Day in Ndola.

Meanwhile, she said there is a need to bridge the gap between and reduce the nurse to patient ratio so as to scale down on the number of bedsiders.

“It is only in Zambia where we have patients being looked after by the family members that bring them to the hospital when sick. It is supposed to be nurses to look after patients. I know the numbers of nurses are low, so we want to start increasing the numbers this year so that we have more nurses in wards to reduce family members,” she said.

On the other hand, Copperbelt Minister Elisha advised nurses to embrace prayer during their line of work.

“You cannot separate prayer from your work. We only have the greatest physician who ever lived, which is Jesus and so as you do your work, add prayer because it is the first priority,” he said.

(Mwebantu, Saturday, 13th May, 2023)

FOLLOWING reports of a paediatric cough syrup which has been identified to be the cause of deaths of some children in Cameroon, the Zambia Medicines Regulatory Authority (ZAMRA) has given out caution.